Kiwi!

At long last, a real live kiwi! I did cheat however, finding a wild kiwi is a thing that does not happen often. Even though you can actually go on night guided trips, I was happy enough to go and have a look at Kiwi North. Kiwi north is a heritage site, with an old colonial building, a first world war history museum. An exposition about the extinct moa, but also some live animals. The old cousin of the dinosaurs, the tuatara was present. Sadly it would only hide behind a rock so I did not get a good picture. The tuatara looks really cool though, kind of reminds me of a komodo dragon, only these little creatures are 25 cm big or something.

Then onto the Kiwi, I have to thank the people at Kiwi North for giving me the most hospitality I have seen in a long time. I enjoyed a lot of explaining how they could have a kiwi indoor, some of which I will share with you guys now :)

The problem with the kiwi's is that they are under too much threats. The humans are taking over too much of their places to live and brought with them several plagues, rats, possums, weasels and normal dogs. In the northern part of the north island I have seen so many signs stating: 'No dogs here, get away!' Aside from that kiwi's are also very territorial, even if you put a male and a female together in an enclosure they would attack each other for breaching their territory. On the other hand however, when kiwi's bond, they bond for live (so cute). So the people at kiwi north place the kiwi's in the same enclosure with a wall in between so they can smell each other, then switch them so they can find more of that scent, then remove the blinds between the wall and finally allow them to be in the same enclosure. Then after they bond they will be put onto a secluded island where they will breed and so the kiwi species will survive :)